Tamimi, Malala and Rahaf — icons of freedom

New forms of resistance to old systems of oppression; three
girl-children of near impossible courage have captured the world’s
imagination. Ahed Tamimi, Malala Yousafzai and Rahaf Mohammed are iconic
symbols from the West Bank to London and from Toronto to Tokyo. None is
celebrated in Pakistan although one is our very own. Why? And what does
this say about us?

Tamimi, who turned 18 this month, has fought Israel’s occupation of
Palestine since she was 11. At 16 and still tiny, a hard slap on a
fully-armed Israeli soldier’s face bought her eight months in prison.
She spent jail time educating other incarcerated youngsters in legal
methods to confront their oppressors. In the Palestinian territories,
she is revered. In Israel, she is reviled, the sentence considered too
light.

Tamimi knows occupation firsthand. Her father had been beaten into a
coma, her brother is still in jail. Her aunt died, pushed down the
stairs by a soldier at a military court. Today, large crowds gather to
hear her speak against Israel’s theft of land and water. Meanwhile, the
authorities hover around, ready to send her back to jail for
“incitement”. Unfazed, she hopes to go to college and someday confront
Israel in international courts.

In a Jew-hating country like Pakistan that’s heavy in rhetoric
against the “Zionist entity”, is Tamimi a heroic figure? Not so! Urdu
columnists have barely mentioned her. Just a thin sliver of
English-adept liberals recognise her name, as they do Rachel Corrie’s.
But they too are ambivalent. A student recently wrote to me that
Tamimi’s strain of activism was “self-serving and superficial”.

Good girls are supposed to be obedient and passive, so this doesn’t
surprise. Female activism—even for the right cause—is deplored by
entrenched patriarchies. Who knows when some tiny wisp of a girl might
turn upon you? Tamimi’s father recounts with amusement that when
Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan told her he stood with the Palestinians, she
duly thanked him and then asked why she had to have a visa for Turkey
when Israelis don’t. Erdogan’s face went red.

I sometimes wonder if our coldness to the photogenic Tamimi comes
from her blue eyes, light skin and flowing golden curls. Does the
Pakistani identification mechanism get upset if a Muslim girl is blonde?
Does blondness put her on the side of the West? Or is our reticence
because she flatly refuses to wear a headscarf, although her mother
does?

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